US-based data center services provider CyrusOne has bought 32 acres of land adjacent to its data center campus in Houston. The purchase brings total size of the campus to 45 acres, all of which the provider wants to turn into the data center mecca for the country's oil-and-gas industry.

Gary Wojtaszek, president and CEO of the recently-gone-public real estate investment trust (REIT), said CyrusOne had created a “geophysical center of excellence for seismic-exploration computing” at its Houston West data center over the past decade.

“As part of this expansion plan, CyrusOne plans to partner with some of the largest universities in our footprint to help accelerate and improve the analytical processes associated with the world's exploration activities by combining the top academic research institutions with the leading oil and gas companies,” he said.

Leading in the data center market for oil and gas industry is part of the company's global strategy. CyrusOne hopes its Houston West campus will attract a lot of research-and-development investment to the area, particularly by companies and countries focused on becoming better at exploration for hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking”.

In November 2012, the provider teamed up with Dell and R Systems to offer cloud-based high-performance-computing services to the energy industry. The supercomputer is hosted at the Houston West data center.

CyrusOne, which went public on Nasdaq in January, operates 24 data centers in the US, Europe and Asia. Before the public offering, the company was owned by the telecommunications company Cincinnati Bell.

Earlier this month, the company launched a statewide internet exchange across its Texas data centers. The exchange has proven popular with its oil-and-gas customers, many of whom use it to share seismic-exploration data, CyrusOne said.